Here are two people who think McCain is going to win.

One important aspect of understanding this election (assuming Obama wins) is whether the Democrats run the table in the Senate races and get to a filibuster-proof 60. If it’s a genuine 1980-change/wave election, they probably will. Not entirely a bad thing--they will be fully in charge, and can’t blame Republican obstructionism for their inability to govern. And then they will overreach.

Obama supposedly is against reviving the "fairness doctrine" (better known as the "Hush Rush Rule"). He’d better tell that to Pelosi and Thin Reid. Meanwhile, one observer says blacks and liberals better be prepared to be disappointed:

African Americans -- and a lot of other people -- better hunker down for some disappointment. Their hero is already getting fitted for the economic and political straitjacket he’ll wear for the next four years. The Middle East wars will rage on and that shiny piggy bank known as the U.S. Treasury will be busted. As black folks always say, when they let us take over, you know things are pretty dire.

Given the likelihood that Senator Obama will be the next President, it is worth thinking about what he will be like as President. (I might be wrong, but my guess is that the Republicans who still think McCain can win are like my Democratic friends who were wired into the 2004 campaign, and thought Kerry would win. In both cases, the key is turnout.)

Politically, we know that Senator Obama knows how to play hardball. In his first race he sued to get everyone else off the balott. And in 2004, his minions pushed to have the divorce proceedings of his opponent revealed to the public. A few years ago, he did not assist a bipartisan efforts to defeat a Chicago machine apparachik in a race for the Cook County Board President. Perhaps Obama judged that the machine candidate would win anyway, and, therefore, there was no reason to oppose the machine. Or perhaps he is comfortable working with the machine (perhaps because he wished to move it to serve his own ends). When a campaign aid told the Canadian government not to take Senator Obama’s anti-Nafta remarks too seriously. Was that his real policy? Or was that aid fired for mis-stating Obama’s real position? This year, he cleverly hit the smaller states hard in the primaries, and was therefore able to defeat Hillary Clinton. He pledged to take public financing for the general election when it was his interest to do so. And he switched to private financing when it was his interest to do so. He keeps saying that Senator McCain is replacing $12,000 worth of health benefits with $5,000 of tax breaks. (It is not his fault that Senator McCain did not respond by asking "does anyone think I would design a plan that would leave workers $7,000 in the hole? That $5,000 is to pay taxed on precisely that $12,000 Senator Obama keeps talking about. And he says he wants to change the tone of Washington . . .) By talking about it that way, Senator Obama avoids talking about the philosophical issues that divide him from Senator McCain on health care. In 2004 he said that he preferred a single payer health care system for the U.S. Is that still his thinking? Does he wish to move us in that direction? Assuming his proposed plan will be renegotiated with Congress, in what direction would he like to see it move?

The Obama campaign kicked the reporters for papers that endoresed Senator McCain off the campaign’s plane, and the campaign has refused to give another interview ever again to a TV station that asked Senator Biden tough questions in an interview. The campaign and its friends has sued or threatened to sue its critics. Senator Obama has not held a press conference in ages, or even given reporters significant access. When Jack Tapper caught up with Obama on an airport tarmac just today, and asked the Senator how he would spend the $700 billion in funds now allocated to backstop the financial system, Obama refused to respond, saying it was not the time or place. When Tapper suggested that he hold a press conference. Obama said he would do so on Wednesday. Senator Obama has sat back and allowed his campaign to make it relatively easy to contribute illegally. (As I understand it, the default settings of credit card receiving software check the credit card number against the name and address. If that’s the case, the people raising money for Senator Obama, unlike those doing so for Senator McCain, turned that part of the software off.) In all these cases, Obama is being an effective politician. He is doing everything he can within the law to further his own cause. Moreover, he is good at working the system. He is, in other words, a clever lawyer and will probably be an effective bureaucrat. He is a good politician who knows how to get the nasty parts of the business done, even as he seems to be above the fray.

But how will Obama legislate? And how will he deal with questions that can’t be handled in that manner? Does he have real backbone? Has he ever dealt with a situation where the tools of organization, litigation, protest, and legislation don’t provide the answer? How will he act when that case comes up? Senator Obama recently declared that "Power concedes nothing without a fight." When our system of freewheeling debate and checks and balances opposes him, will he see it as part of the constitutional system he is sworn to "preserve, protect, and defende" or as a power to be opposed? Is that rhetoric that a master politician is using to fire up his base, or a declaration of principles? (In short, what rules of the game will a President Obama observe? Does anyone know for sure?)

The Mason-Dixon poll has McCain up two in Ohio. And McCain’s performance on SNL was excellent. He played himself a lot better than Obama could ever play himself. (Imagine Barack being ironically self-deprecating while staying in character.) The idea of buying time of QVC--because that’s all he could afford--allowed for a lot of gentle, pointed shots at Obama, and Tina Fey was sort of subdued and almost ashamed in his presence. Her moment as the rogue Sarah was funny, though. So was the set of three "Joe dolls"--Joe the Plumber, Joe Six-Pack, and Joe Biden.

If you think you’re not psyched up enough to bother voting on the real election day, let the Sowell man speak to you.

Anyone who looks at the stats from the early voting in Georgia can doubt that Obama will likely carry the state. About half of those who’ll actually vote voted early. The turnout is disproportionally African American. Overall, black turnout will about double this year. The Obama people employed about 4800 captains statewide to get people to the polls. And it’s been touching to see people patiently waiting for hours to make sure their voice is heard. Part of this is the real pride and hope that come with finally having one of your own competing so well for the highest office. But admirable human emotion has to be mobilized with "community organization." Obama’s organization has got the job done. The best poll I’ve seen has Obama up 10 or more among early voters.

MEANWHILE, the Republicans haven’t taken early voting seriously and even SAVED a lot of their money for the last few days of the campaign. So NOW McCain is outspending OBAMA, but now is surely too late. It should be an elementary principle of political science to encourage early voting, because, by providing multiple days and opportunites for voting, it takes a lot of the CHANCE out of it. You’re bound to lose some voters for all sorts of reasons when you focus on a single twelve-hour period.

Well, like everyone else I’m watching the weekend unfold, and grasping at straws showing McCain supposedly surging. I can’t tell. But there are two things to keep your eyes on as the votes are counted Tuesday night. The prospective election of Obama is touted as a sign of the end of the Age of Reagan (Patent Pending), and the beginning of the Europeanization of America. Maybe. But watch Massachusetts, where a ballot measure to repeal the state income tax might pass, and California where Proposition 8 would repeal gay marriage. Polls show both are going to be close calls.

From the indispensable Wheat&Weeds, a lyrical accompaniment to my deadly earnest thesis below about Obama as the anti-Lincoln.

I gotta admit there’s little more to say. It’s too late to argue the case for McCain with any effectiveness to those not already on board. The polls just don’t look good, but Obama’s ground game does. He’s now pouring money into Georgia, probably more to influence the senate race than to get a few more electoral votes. I don’t know for sure that Obama will win, but I’m not going to be making any predictions, given that I’ve stopped betting or choosing against teams I really want to win. Obama has run a fine campaign, and McCain, it seems to me, has given us his best. It’s not some meltdown of the "conservative movement." The Republicans have not proven to be particularly competent for a while when it comes to governing, and this year competence gap has been pretty wide when it comes to campaigning. It goes without saying we have to honor the spirit of McCain’s "nothing is inevitable" stump speech by doing what we can to affect the outcome. Never give up, as Mac says.

To be fair or at least balanced, here are ten reasons John Podhoretz thought up that McCain might still win. They aren’t really backed up with much data, as John admits.

From the Tax Foundation:

But a new study on inequality by researchers at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris reveals that when it comes to household taxes (income taxes and employee social security contributions) the U.S. "has the most progressive tax system and collects the largest share of taxes from the richest 10% of the population." ... The table also shows that the U.S. collects more household tax revenue from the top 10 percent of households than any other country and extracts the most from that income group relative to their share of the nation’s income.

Obama’s speeches and books make liberal use of Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence, but in far different ways than they intended. What isn’t appreciated is how Obama’s rhetoric fits perfectly his political strategy and tactics.

Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod’s "bookshelves are filled with Abe Lincoln biographies, but what he says he admires about Lincoln isn’t just his philosophy but his political effectiveness, the Great Emancipator’s secret shiv."

Not just conservatives will repeatedly bleed from that "secret shiv" wielded by an Obama Administration. Moreover, his campaign skillfully displayed time after time neo-Lincolnian "political effectiveness"--e.g., turning Obama negatives into formidable political plusses and transforming the most appealing features of the American political tradition into a post-modern willfulness that reinforces the Administrative State and undermines true liberty.

Thus, Obama’s frequent recourse to the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln is not just a sign of self-flattery but of grand ambition, to remake America, in the name of a new, new birth of freedom.

In this, does Obama not recall Lincoln’s warning, issued short of his 29th birthday:

Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It seeks regions hitherto unexplored. It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments of fame, erected to the memory of others. It denies that it is glory enough to serve under any chief. It scorns to tread in the footsteps of any predecessor, however illustrious. It thirsts and burns for distinction; and, if possible, it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving freemen. Is it unreasonable then to expect, that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time, spring up among us? And when such a one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs.

Distinction will be his paramount object; and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.